Representations of Functions

Kenneth Levasseur
Mathematical Sciences
UMass Lowell
Kenneth_Levasseur@uml.edu

This page shows how the same function can be represented in many different ways. The function happens to be a discrete exponential function, but the same types of representations apply to virtually any of the functions in Calculus I

Instructions

  1. Select the growth rate you want to see
  2. Select the representation of the population function that you want to see to go with a verbal representation.

Verbal Representation

Suppose that we want to model the population of a colony of birds that grows at a rate of Created by webMathematica each year starting at year 0 with 1,000 birds. Suppose that this growth rate remains constant for six years. Let Created by webMathematica be the population of the colony after k years. Note: We presume that k is a whole number and Created by webMathematica . We'll see how the domain can be extended to include all real numbers between 0 and 6 later.